Short Underground Metal Reviews

Main menu

Post navigation

Integral – Resilience (Technical Death Metal)

I’ve said it before and I will say it again. 2017 is a great year for Italian death metal, be it technical, brutal or whatever. Integral is probably not a name you know when you think of the Italian scene. Which isn’t strange since Resilience is the bands full-length debut and they were formed in 2013. That being said do not take this band lightly! When you can draw in guests like Steffen Kummerer from Obscura and Tommy Talamanca from Sadist on your debut you know this band is going to go places.

So what do they sound like? Well this is where it gets tricky! I label Integral as technical death metal but in reality they sound like a mix of a lot of different genres and bands. Vocals I think is rather close to The Black Dahlia Murder, while the instrumental play is as much The Faceless as it is Gorod, Obscura and Beyond Creation. Add some deathcore groovy breakdowns to it and you got yourself an Italian Chimera that’s ready to devour you. This is an album full of surprises. I mean even having the different influences in mind there are plenty of tempo-changes, riffs and what not that makes me go wow. There are also equally many parts that makes me go urgh I didn’t like this. A perfect example of this is the song Hieroglyphica. While it features some really awesome segments it also got leaves me wanting to almost skip the song at times, really weird roller-coaster ride for me musically. Both the bands strength and weakness to have all these mashups, I am sure they can only improve their sound in the future.

All together the ten songs Resilience offers is a good start for Integral and this album is sure to make at least one of you become a fan of their style. While I am not completely sold yet I think this is a superb debut and I am interested to see where they take their sound on the sophomore album.